Unusual take on diversity and color
New York Times editorial by Brent Staples entitled When Racial Discrimination Is Not Just Black and White discusses a racial mix most Americans never think about: “black Indians” — as in American Indians — who may look entirely like African Americans.
As the author indicates, “Native Americans actually held slaves. Like the white slave owners they emulated, Native Americans often fathered children by enslaved women and occasionally . . . treated those children as family. As a result, millions of black Americans are descended from black people who were either members of the tribes during slavery or adopted into them just after Emancipation.”
“White families have begun to acknowledge mixed-race connections after centuries of denial. But the attitudes of some Native Americans have not evolved in the same way. Both the Seminole and the Cherokee tribes have employed discriminatory policies to prevent black members from receiving tribal benefits — and to strip them of the right to vote in tribal elections.”
See this related blawg entry on minority-on-minority discrimination.
